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Tyrone Phillips' complaint that police beat him unconscious has been dismissed, a week after a weird dispute between the SIU, OIPRD and Toronto police was settled.

Tyrone Phillips is upset his complaint about the actions of Toronto police have been dismissed by the Special Investigations Unit, a week after a bizarre catch-22 involving jurisdiction was resolved. "I’m so upset. I’m so angry,” he said after hearing the news. “Did I kick myself in the head? Did I give myself bruises in the back of my ears? Did I slam my own face on the ground?”
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By Amy DempseyStaff Reporter

Mon., Jan. 14, 2013

It was opened, then closed, then reopened, and now it’s closed again.

The province’s police watchdog said Monday there are “no reasonable grounds” to charge a Toronto police officer with a criminal offence in the case of 27-year-old Tyrone Phillips, who alleged he was beaten unconscious by police during an arrest last summer.

His case was the subject of a bizarre public dispute that played out between Toronto police and the SIU earlier this month, after the watchdog announced it had been forced to close the investigation because the force was keeping Phillips’s statement secret.

Phillips, an aircraft parts technician and father of a 17-month-old son, alleged he suffered a concussion after he was beaten by five officers during a July 28 arrest outside Tryst Nightclub in the Entertainment District. He faces charges of assaulting a peace officer and obstruction of justice.

An SIU officer called Phillips Monday to tell him the outcome of his complaint.

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“I almost started crying on the phone,” he said. “I’m so upset. I’m so angry.”

“Did I kick myself in the head? Did I give myself bruises in the back of my ears? Did I slam my own face on the ground?”

A complaint investigation was launched after Phillips filed a handwritten statement with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director last August, following two hospital visits that confirmed he had suffered a concussion.

In September, the OIPRD sent Phillips’s complaint to the Toronto police for investigation. Toronto police then forwarded it in October to the SIU, which probes police-civilian incidents involving serious injury or death. But when SIU investigators asked Toronto police for Phillips’s statement, the force said it did not have the authority to hand it over because the statement belonged to the OIPRD.

The OIPRD, meanwhile, could not send the report to the SIU because its privacy policy says it can only send a complaint to the affected police force. It can, however, send the grievance back to the complainant upon request. Phillips made that request on Jan. 4, obtained the form, gave it to the SIU, and the investigation was reopened last Monday.

On the night in question last summer, Phillips and a group of people were leaving a nightclub when one of his friends got in an argument with a security guard. Phillips and his friend were then taken to the ground by a group of police officers and arrested.The SIU found “significant” discrepancies in the accounts given by Phillips and his friends, the security guard and police.

“All in all,” SIU director Ian Scott said in a news release, “I am not satisfied on reasonable grounds that the subject officer caused the injuries in question, and if he did that the force used was excessive.”

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